from the how? dept

We've seen a few other cases like this and never can understand how a court thinks it's reasonable for a third party service provider to know how to block its system from being used for infringement, but that's exactly what's happened in the Court of Amsterdam. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has apparently won a lawsuit against Usenet provider News-Service.com (NSE). The court has ordered NSE to magically make all infringing works available via Usenet disappear. Of course, if you understood how third party systems work, you would know that the only way to do that is to no longer be an open platform, which takes away all the value of such a service. NSE responded pretty much as you would expected -- in shock about the impossibility of the order:

We are very disappointed with the Courtís verdict. It is technically as well as economically unfeasible to check the contents of the 15 to 20 million messages that are exchanged on a daily basis. Added to which, there is no automated way of checking whether Usenet messages contain copyrighted material or whether permission has been obtained for the distribution of such material.

It's kind of amazing that a court of law can't understand how the internet works. For its part, BREIN claims that this is "a breakthrough step." Yeah, taking down major communication platforms because the organizations you represent refuse to adapt. That's a "breakthrough"?

from the if-you-haven't-paid-for-it,-it's-stealing dept

We've noted in the past how the very aggressive Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN seems to have a problem with stealing computers. The group, which is a private, industry-backed group, seems to fancy itself as some sort of law enforcement adjunct, despite the fact it has no actual legal authority. This has created problems in the past, when the courts have questioned why the police seemed to rely solely on BREIN's questionably collected evidence, rather than doing their own investigation. And some lawsuits have even been dismissed for relying too much on BREIN's highly questionable evidence.

So, by now, you would think that BREIN would be a bit more careful these days not to pretend it has more legal powers than it does. However, the group only seems to go further and further. Last week, it came out that BREIN was able to "seize" a group of servers from a small South African American ISP without any legal basis at all. It just convinced the data center, WorldStream, to simply hand them over. The ISP, Alejandra Transporte SA, who has nothing to do with the warez topsite that BREIN insisted were using those servers, was not at all happy and went to court to complain about the fact that a bunch of its servers had been stolen, causing massive damages to its business. The court granted the request to get the servers back from BREIN, but is quite worried that BREIN went through the private contents on some of the servers, completely in violation of privacy laws.

It seems this entire lack of any sort of due process and private industry groups stealing servers and domains with little basis is a growing trend. It sounds like Alejandra Transporte is considering taking further legal action against both BREIN and WorldStream. I'm curious if the usual defenders of seizures think that this particular seizure was warranted?

from the if-a-tree-falls... dept

The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has a history both of assuming it has much more authority than it really does and in announcing how it has shut down all sorts of "piracy" sites that no one seems to know exist. Lately, it's been teaming up with the MPAA on such things. The latest is the claim that BREIN and the MPAA have been able to shut down a dozen more "torrent sites." Except that no one seems to know what sites these were, and there's no indication that anyone actually used them. As TorrentFreak points out, when sites people actually use get taken down, people start emailing to tell them about it -- but no such emails came in with these shutdowns. Kind of makes you wonder just what BREIN and the MPAA are actually doing.

from the hmmm dept

We've certainly voiced our concerns over the US government's growing involvement in copyright infringement lawsuits that really should be civil matters between copyright holders and those they accuse of infringement. However, with our government often believing just about anything Hollywood tells them, and with a long term effort by the industry to have the government act as its own private police force, we're seeing things like the totally botched seizure of domain names of blogs and forums on a questionable basis. It seems that the US is not the only country with this sort of problem. Earlier this year, we noted that a court in the Netherlands was questioning why it appeared that Dutch law enforcement had totally outsourced its investigations to the industry "anti-piracy" group BREIN (who, we had noted, in the past somehow ended up keeping evidence) that should not be allowed to be done by private parties.

Well, in that case, against an indexing site called ShareConnector, the court has dismissed the case over the "faulty evidence," specifically having to do with law enforcement relying way too much on industry sources, rather than doing the real investigation themselves. This follows on an earlier criminal case where the operator of ShareConnector had all charges dismissed as well.

Once again, all this highlights is how these issues are not as clear cut as the industry and its supporters often make out. It's getting rather silly how often we hear people insist that this or that service or software are "obviously" infringing on copyrights -- and no case should even be heard before they're shut down/seized/thrown in jail/fined whatever. Copyright is not a black or white situation -- there's an awful lot of gray and it should be determined in a court of law, rather than just on the say so of certain industries who benefit from shutting down alternative means of distribution that interfere with their ability to be a gatekeeper.

from the everyone-seize-domains-now dept

Now that the US government appears to be endorsing the idea of simply seizing domain names without notice to the proprietors of those domains, it appears that others are doing the same as well. TorrentFreak reports that the Dutch anti-piracy group, BREIN, with help from the MPAA, has been able to get 29 different domain names -- all hosted in the US -- to point to BREIN's homepage instead. The owners of those domains were apparently given no notice and no recourse. It sounds like most of the sites did not host any content but linked to potentially infringing content.

Whether or not you believe that simply linking to potentially infringing content should be against the law, we're seeing yet another example of the simple lack of due process and how this may impact other areas. If BREIN can get US domains shut down, what's to stop other countries from doing the same thing? China doesn't like reporting by an American site about China? What's to stop it from trying to "seize" that domain? Even if we grant the idea that many of these domains were engaged in or encouraging unauthorized copying of works covered by copyright, why should BREIN and the MPAA simply get to shut them down without any sort of trial?

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

TorrentFreak has some disturbing news coming out of the legal fight in the Netherlands between anti-piracy group BREIN and Usenet community provider FTD. Apparently BREIN had somewhere around 15 "investigators" acting as FTD members -- and they may be using the actions of at least one to prove their legal point. FTD has argued, reasonably, that its members are not uploading content, but merely pointing out where it is available. BREIN argued, in response, that it was often the same users who would upload and point it out. Their evidence? A user who uploaded and pointed out the same movie. The problem? The guy who did that... works for BREIN. That sounds like planting evidence, a tactic law enforcement is sometimes seen to employ -- but BREIN is a private organization. Apparently, BRIEN is so closely tied to Dutch law enforcement that they seem to think they're part of it -- even going so far as to copy some law enforcement abuses.

from the freedom-of-choice dept

The Dutch "anti-piracy" group BREIN has been one of the most aggressive in bringing all kinds of lawsuits in attempting to use basically any means possible to block various torrent sites. It has sued ISPs telling them they need to block The Pirate Bay and it has sued The Pirate Bay, telling it that it needs to block all Dutch users from accessing the site. On the ISP front, it appears that a few Dutch ISPs are teaming up to challenge the demand that it needs to block foreign sites like The Pirate Bay:

"The basic principle of the Internet is that ISPs pass on traffic to their customers unfiltered, they are merely a gateway," says Niels Huijbregts, spokesman for XS4ALL. "The Pirate Bay website is not hosted on a Ziggo server, so Ziggo can't be held responsible for restricting access to the website. BREIN is targeting the wrong people."

While this makes sense, it seems like every time we hear about court cases involving BREIN, the group comes out on top. So if I had to guess, I'm assuming that BREIN will win again. Hopefully I'll be surprised and the Dutch courts will pick up some common sense somewhere along the way.

from the if-a-file-sharing-site-that-no-one-uses-closes,-does-it-make-a-sound? dept

TorrentFreak has an article up about an announcement from the rather aggressive Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, insisting that it had shut down nearly 400 different BitTorrent sites in 2009, along with another 200 plus "illegal sites." However, as TorrentFreak notes, no one seems to know what the majority of these sites were. It had cataloged somewhere around two dozen sites that were shutdown, but didn't hear a peep from the users of the other hundreds of sites shut down -- which seems odd, since users of such sites are usually pretty quick to tell TorrentFreak of any shutdowns. So, did BREIN shut down sites that no one uses? Or did those users not tell anyone? Anyone have any answers?

from the another-mole-wac'd dept

Back in August, we noted that a Dutch court, at the urging of anti-piracy group BREIN (which has a history of questionable tactics), had ordered Mininova to remove all infringing links from its index. Even though the court admitted that Mininova itself was not infringing, it was told to remove any torrents that linked to infringing material. Since there's simply no way to know whether the torrents link to infringing material, and tests of some filtering solutions proved to not do a very good job, the site has decided to remove all torrents other than those specifically approved by the site. End result? The entertainment industry may have wac'd another mole, as Mininova users simply scatter to other providers. But the industry hasn't done anything to get people more interested in buying. How many more moles get wac'd before anyone figures this out?

from the yet-again dept

Earlier this year, a Dutch court issued a default judgment against The Pirate Bay, ordering it to delete certain torrents and block Dutch web surfers from reaching the site. The Pirate Bay's founders protested the ruling, noting that they had not been properly informed of the case in the first place, and that other items in the lawsuit were highly questionable -- including what appeared to be falsified documents submitted by BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy agency.

The court has now annulled the original default judgment, but the new ruling is basically the same thing. The founders were told to delete torrents and block Dutch surfers from at least part of the site. The court also rejected the claim that the founders do not still own the site, saying they presented no evidence that the site had actually been sold to another entity, or any evidence of who now owned the site. While I still think it's questionable to force the site to block results of what is really a search engine, there is a point about who owns the site. I recognize why The Pirate Bay has done what it's done, but it almost feels like they're trying to be too cute about the ownership issue.